Atari Lynx

The Atari Lynx has a genuine claim to a historical first: it was the world's first handheld game console with a color, backlit LCD screen, beating every rival to the punch when it launched in 1989. Designed by the talented team at Epyx, including engineers who had worked on the Amiga, it was a startlingly advanced piece of hardware for its moment, capable of hardware sprite scaling and rotation effects that put many home consoles to shame.

Physically it was a chunky, ambitious machine, and unusually it could be flipped to play comfortably left- or right-handed, a thoughtful touch. It boasted a ComLynx cable system that let multiple units link together for multiplayer, another feature ahead of its time. On specifications alone, the Lynx made the Game Boy, released the very same year, look primitive.

And yet it was routed. Two flaws proved decisive. First, that glorious color backlit screen was ravenous, chewing through six AA batteries in a handful of hours, the same affliction that would later doom the Game Gear. Second, and more damning, the Lynx never assembled a compelling library. It offered decent arcade conversions like California Games, Blue Lightning, and Chip's Challenge, but nothing approaching a system-seller, no Tetris, no Mario, no reason for the masses to choose it.

Atari, distracted and cash-strapped, could not match Nintendo's marketing muscle or software pipeline. The Lynx sold only a few million units across its life before quietly fading around 1995, a rounding error against the Game Boy's tens of millions.

The Lynx's legacy is that of a brilliant machine that arrived with the right technology and the wrong business behind it. It is a favorite of collectors and retro enthusiasts precisely because it was so advanced and so overlooked, a genuine pioneer that proved color handheld gaming was possible years before anyone made it profitable. History remembers it as the technically superior loser to the humble grey brick that understood players better.